SAP trying to sell cloud solutions to govt

 SAP expects cloud solutions to bring in revenue of Euro 1.6 billion in 2017. In the second quarter of this year, the revenue from cloud was Euro 69 million. Annualized, that's about Euro 276 million.
That means the Euro 14-billion German enterprise software major expects cloud revenue to rise by 6 times in the next five years. "Our strong combination with SuccessFactors (provider of cloudbased human capital management solutions) is allowing us to accelerate our strategy of becoming the leading cloud provider," SAP Labs India MD V R Ferose said. SAP acquired SuccessFactors in December last year. In May this year, SAP also acquired Ariba, a leader in cloudbased collaborative commerce applications , connecting to more than 730,000 suppliers. 

SAP, which has 200,000 customers globally, also plans to leverage HANA to power the cloud-based solutions . HANA, short for high-performance analytic appliance, is SAP's in-memory computing solution that enables real time analytics of large volumes of data. 
In India, SAP is looking at the public sector as one of the major areas to sell its cloud solutions. The Indian government has formed a committee to recommend a framework for adopting and promoting cloud computing services. Currently, the government's infrastructure for e-governance initiatives , like the state data centres, is sub-optimally utilized. 
"The cloud computing model will allow the government to be more functionality centric than technology centric. State data centres are an excellent infrastructure resource that can be upgraded to provide various horizontal applications on a private cloud to all the departments in a state government," Ferose said. 
He said that public sector enterprises in India are an excellent example of organizations that could consider adopting ERP applications on a cloud model. "SAP is actively working towards raising awareness in this area, and is collaborating with relevant stakeholders in the government," Ferose said. 
What about security concerns about the cloud? "Fear about security is unwarranted. Initially, everybody thought cloud is for start-ups . But now, even large enterprises are using it. Many Fortune-500 companies are selectively using it," Ferose said. 
(This correspondent was at Krabi on the invitation of SAP Labs India)